If you're looking for classic
cross-generational pop culture moments, you can't do much better than that
famous night 50 years ago, when Ed Sullivan introduced The Beatles to American
television viewers.

Back in February of 1964, there
were only three TV networks. And if you were watching TV on Sunday night,
chances were good you were tuning in to "The Ed Sullivan Show." It was a
variety show, a genre that modern television sporadically tries to revive, but
now seems as antique as 8 millimeter home movies.

Designed as a showcase for
the most diverse acts you can imagine – everyone from opera singers to Elvis
Presley – Sullivan's show debuted in 1948 (it was called "Toast of the Town" in
those early days.)

While the acts were
impressive -- drawing from stars of the New York theater and classical music
worlds, in addition to vaudeville-style jugglers, comics and Topo Gigio, the
mouse puppet with a spumoni-sweet Italian accent – the show became a hit
despite of its host's limitations.

A former newspaper
show-business reporter and columnist, Sullivan was hardly a natural on camera.
His posture was stiff and hunched, and so wooden he resembled a piece of
slightly warped lumber. He had all the charisma of someone who previously made
his living sitting behind a typewriter, which is to say, zero.

And Sullivan's vocal
mannerisms made him a prime target for impressionists, who mimicked the host's
habit of telling viewers about tonight's "really big shew." Why, in his more
than two decades on TV, Sullivan never could pronounce the "o" in "show" is one
of the mysteries of midcentury entertainment.

Sullivan's show was aimed at mainstream viewers. And though he had a sharp eye
for emerging talent, Sullivan himself looked like the squarest of the square.

Though Elvis got things all
shook up when he appeared on Sullivan's show in 1956, it took The Beatles
playing "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1964 to really signal that a youth revolution
was about to explode.

The Beatles' debut appearance on
Sullivan's show coincided with the first, full-blown wave of giddy Beatlemania
in the U.S. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had been the top-selling single in the
country. Suddenly, their songs were all over the radio, and thousands of
screaming girls welcomed the band's plane when it landed in New York.

It seems unthinkable now, but The
Beatles had been very nervous about coming to America to appear on Sullivan's
show and perform for audiences. Other
acts that had been huge in Britain, after all, had fizzled in the U.S.

They needn't have worried. As Sullivan, with his slicked-back hair and
uptight manner, introduced The Beatles on his show, the crowd erupted in
screams. More than 73 million people
tuned in. As the Ed Sullivan website says, 60 percent "of the televisions
turned on were tuned in to Ed Sullivan and The Beatles."

"The Beatles: The Night that Changed America -- A Grammy Salute"

When: 8 p.m. Sunday Feb. 9

Channnel: CBS (6)

If you were old enough to watch, you
remember it, even if you may have forgotten which songs the band performed –
"All My Loving," "Till There Was You," "She Loves You," "I Saw Her Standing
There" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand." As for the other acts on the show that
night, they're recalled only as parenthetical footnotes (the Sullivan website
reminds us that The Beatles shared the
bill with, among others, Frank Gorshin, acrobats Wells & the Four Fays, the
McCall and Brill comedy team, Georgia Brown and the cast of the Broadway show,
"Oliver," and a magician named Fred Kaps.)

Though the 1964 Beatles, as seen with
today's eyes, looked clean-cut and wholesome with their trimmed longish hair
and neat suits, they personified the shock of the new. Overnight, Sullivan
looked even more square than he was before. The corny jokes about John Lennon,
Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr needing haircuts sounded
impossibly out of touch.

By the time the band appeared two more
times on "The Ed Sullivan Show" in February 1964, and again in 1965, they had
helped redefine entertainment. The song-and-dance men, comedy duos, and
acrobats from the Sullivan show's previous era seemed like stale leftovers from
the 1950s.

The Beatles' Sullivan appearances gave
the 1960s a kick of adrenaline, and launched the era of young people as ultimate
arbiters of taste. From that February day to this one, youth culture is
synonymous with what's up-to-date and desirable.

Looking at the lineup for the CBS
Beatles/Sullivan show 50th anniversary special, it's apparent that
the program was put together to try to appeal to various demographic
groups. In addition to archival material
looking back at that first Sullivan appearance, the special features
performances of Beatles tunes by Stevie Wonder, Maroon 5, John Mayer, Pharrell
Williams, Keith Urban, Alicia Keys, Dave Grohl and others, taped on Jan. 27.

But the biggest news is that the two
surviving Beatles, McCartney and Starr, will perform. That's the indisputable
highlight. Even now, they're still the coolest cats in the room, the one-of-a-kind
originals, the reason to get yourself to the couch to turn on the TV once again,
and hear the echoes of delighted, joyous
screams, from all those years ago.